Barn2Door Podcast Ideation

It starts here…

First, a little background. Last autumn at university, I started blogging for the student radio station at the University of Washington. I was able to interview artists, write about music, and tell the stories of others through my own perspective (check out my interview with the Brook and Thee Bluff here). Later in the year, I was brought on to be a DJ at the radio station. It gave me a platform where I was able to share the stories of artists, students and friends through a different medium (i.e. live podcasts and shows). Little did I know, my passion project would apply outside of the classroom.

Working at Barn2Door

Over the summer of 2019 I interned at a SaaS startup called Barn2Door. Simply, Barn2Door aims to connect Farmers with their local communities by allowing consumers to easily order produce online through online, social, and mobile. In a fast paced startup culture, I was able to assist with much more than just “market research”. This included the ideation and execution of projects including social ad design, content creation (blogs + ebooks), and most notably a Barn2Door Podcast.

A problem worth solving

From the beginning of the internship, my supervisor encouraged me to search for avenues in which the company could improve and expand in. A large emphasis in our marketing efforts was put on establishing emotional connection and empathy with our Farmers. Specifically with the goal of establishing trust with potential customers. Our marketing efforts already included informational blog posts, ebooks, and Facebook lives/YouTube videos. But most were rather impersonal and product focused. Without physically visiting our Farmers to film spotlights or interview them, how could we share their success stories with potential customers?

The Solution

Every week during company-wide meetings, we would choose one farm to spotlight based on their progress, growth, or their story. Alongside the Farmer spotlight we had employees highlight one of our core 6 values (Humble, Hungry, Hardy, Humor, Helpful and Heart) and explain why they chose that value. Then it hit me. Barn2Door could combine the two aspects into a podcast where it could not only underscore our Farmers’ experiences with Barn2Door, but also our company’s values and employees.

The Process

After a couple weeks of in depth research which included listening to other podcasts and interviewing our success team (who work with our Farmers in onboarding and utilizing the platform), I was able to materialize my thoughts into a framework for the Podcast. It looked like this:

Overview

• Overall Goal: Educate the audience on how Farmers can work with technology + Barn2Door to connect with communities and gain local customers through a podcast featuring Barn2Door team members.

• Runtime: 10-15 min. Farmers have very little time, meaning short and digestible content is preferable.

• Audience: Farmers who are/may be interested in Barn2Door (early/late majority on the adoption curve).

Structure

• Introduction part 1: This consists of introducing both the host and the purpose/objective of the podcast. Often this is repeated verbatim in every episode in order to create consistency and educate listeners.

• Introduction part 2: The second portion of the introduction is aimed at overviewing the episode-specific content, guests on the show, and other relevant background information before diving into the content.

• Conversation: If there’s one thing I’ve learned from podcasting before, structuring and preparing questions is helpful, but what’s even more helpful is letting the narrative drive questions rather than the other way around. Instead of trying to micromanage conversations, I aimed at focusing on broad points/topics such as:

  • Employee background (why they chose to join Barn2Door)

  • What types of Farmers do employees work with? What have they learned from Farmers?

  • Anecdotes on farms they’ve worked with how technology has enables their farms to succeed.

  • Lastly, through employees’ stories with farms, what core value is most relevant to their anecdotes.

• Wrap up: To conclude, I wanted to first thank the guest and listeners but second, underscore two ideas:

  • A main takeaway, phrased as “If there’s one thing that you (the listener) should take away from today’s conversation, it’s _____”

  • Call to action: This is to remind listeners to take a look at Barn2Door as a company, whether it be through a demo or simply checking Barn2Door’s website. This is necessary to continue the consumer’s journey en route to starting a conversation with Barn2Door.

Now what?

By the time I had finished ideation, interviewing, testing, and finally presenting to our team, I had only two weeks left at Barn2Door. Due to concerns about being able to have a consistent voice behind the project beyond my departure, I was never able to fully record an episode. But in the end of the day, I was able to leave Barn2Door knowing I had laid down the foundation for an idea that would be pursued in the near future. Below is a recording of the introduction I used in my pitch to my team. Hopefully it gives more insight into what the podcast could be.